My New Samsung LED TV – Weird!

[htpc_user]

My wife bought a Samsung UN40C6300SF LED TV for our bedroom (without my input), and I cannot get used to the picture on this thing.  It is crazy!  My wife says she thinks it looks great, and she says that I am crazy for thinking something is “wrong”.  It is not a 3D TV, but it looks 3D’ish to some extent.  People who are the main focus in a scene look to stand out from the background, and to me it is distracting.  It’s hard to explain but it looks like I’m watching something with a low production value.  It makes things in the background look…fake?  Has anyone else had an experience similar to this, either with a TV they bought or saw in the store?

[jennyfur]

Not the same, but back when I bought my first DLP, I totally was plagued by the rainbow effect. The fact that the screen was so much bigger than what I was used to made it even more noticeable because I’d focus on one area instead of the whole screen at once.

[ruwackd]

Its a characteristic of the 120HZ tvs also referred to as the “Soap Opera Effect”.  Looking at your manual, try going into Menu->Picture->Advanced and turning off “LED Motion Plus”

[Matt]

To be more precise it is characteristic of TVs that have a frame interpolation option, such as 120Hz or 240Hz LCDs. It is not because of the TV being 120Hz in-and-of-itself.

I agree that it’s really odd looking and distracting, especially for film content. A lot of lay people seem to love how smooth it makes everything look.

When you turn it off your TV will just repeat frames to get up to 120Hz/240Hz, keeping the same cadence as the source.

[htpc_user]

ruwackd, it’s funny that you mention the Soap Opera Effect.  I hadn’t heard that before but that’s exactly how I started to explain it. In fact, that’s what I told my wife. I will try turning off the motion plus tonight to see how I like it.

[George L. Schmauch Jr.]

I could swear I read something about Hollywood avoiding creating movies using this format* because of this very effect.  In other words, I thought they were saying that they needed to intentionally make movies look fake because making them look real (soap opera effect) had the opposite effect on people.

* I’m saying “format” because that’s the term that makes sense to me and the way I understood it, but Matt has me thinking it’s more of an “after effect” or feature on TVs, as opposed to how the material is being filmed.  If anyone knows for sure, I’d like to be enlightened.

[Matt]

[quote=”Skirge01″]
I could swear I read something about Hollywood avoiding creating movies using this format* because of this very effect.  In other words, I thought they were saying that they needed to intentionally make movies look fake because making them look real (soap opera effect) had the opposite effect on people.

* I’m saying “format” because that’s the term that makes sense to me and the way I understood it, but Matt has me thinking it’s more of an “after effect” or feature on TVs, as opposed to how the material is being filmed.  If anyone knows for sure, I’d like to be enlightened.
[/quote]

Nothing is shot at more than 60fps. Standard 35mm theatrical released films are always 24 fps, now sometimes they’ve used digital cameras in the filming processes but they’re still shot at 24fps and eventually transfered to 35mm for general theatrical release.

Some sports is shot at 720p/60. A lot of cheap soap operas are shot on video cameras (these days digital video cameras) and so they’re 30 fps. Which is where the term “soap opera effect” came from, because when you enable frame interpolation you get this ultra smooth “more video than video” effect that looks like a soap opera’s 30fps shooting style taken to an extreme.

[George L. Schmauch Jr.]

Got it.  Now I remember that it was, indeed, the fps that I read about and that’s why we don’t see more 30fps or 60fps footage.

Thanks, Matt!

[einstein]

Interesting that the spammer chose this thread to resurrect. I just got done reading an article about The Hobbit being filmed at 48fps. Peter Jackson showed a 10 minute preview at CinemaCon, reactions are mixed. One of the articles says some of the huge movie guys are pushing this format. 

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/peter-jacksons-48fps-presentation-of-the-hobbit-at-cinemacon-gets-a-mixed-response-20120424

I bought 2 large 120hz TVs on black Friday last year. Hate to think that they will be doing a 3:2 pulldown soon. 

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